


Now That I’ve Found You, Stay (And Let Me Love You, Baby)

by luninosity



Category: Actor RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Coffee, First Meetings, Fluff, Holding Hands, Humor, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Rain, Sex Toys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-30
Updated: 2014-10-30
Packaged: 2018-02-23 07:17:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2539082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Semi-AU first-meeting awkward fluffy adorableness. Collisions on a rainy day. Ninja Turtle jokes. Sex toys in a bag. Holding of hands. Falling in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now That I’ve Found You, Stay (And Let Me Love You, Baby)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sadsongssaysomuch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadsongssaysomuch/gifts).



> Quick birthday fic for a lovely friend! As ever, only doing this out of affection, all fictional. 
> 
> Title courtesy of Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” this time.

Chris is running late.   
  
Chris is running late and his meeting’d gone long and there’d been a line at the store and the skies’re looming portentously overhead and he’s going to show up way past the time they’d said for his brother’s birthday and—   
  
He sprints down the bustling New York street, dodging pedestrians. If they recognize him, they don’t bother moving. But why would they, not as if he’s _that_ famous, a brand-new director with exactly one film under his Boston-kid belt—granted, one well-received film, but—   
  
He can’t let that worry in to nibble at his brain. His brain’s too susceptible to the gnawing as it is. Anxiety. Prickling little scratches of _not good enough, letting everyone down, they know you’re just faking it_ along his spine.   
  
No, he thinks forcefully. Nope. And he’s damn well not going to let Scott down, either, he’s going to find his car and get the hell out of the city and back to Boston and—   
  
He’s running past a Starbucks. The door opens. A person steps out, with colossally awful timing and eyes glancing up at the looming sky instead of at the sidewalk.   
  
The thump rattles the world. Knocks them both to the pavement. They sit there blinking for a minute.   
  
Chris scrambles upright first. “Oh shit—sorry, sorry—” The person’s drenched in pumpkin-spice latte, and his scarf’s likely unsalvageable, sapphire-blue dyed cinnamon and brown. He looks a bit shell-shocked; no surprise, as he’s just gone out for innocent trendy seasonal coffee and been run down by a stranger on the sidewalk.    
  
Chris tries again: “I’m so sorry, I just—I was—are you okay, can I—” and then he says “Oh fuck me you’re Sebastian Stan,” because the person is.   
  
Sebastian Stan. Broadway. Theater. The person at the top of this year’s Rising Star list. Referred to in various media circles as—depending on the outlet and target demographic—the next up-and-coming Paul Newman, or the single most adorable Romanian sex kitten of 2014, or the sweetest kid on the planet, or the actor every single Hollywood director’s hoping to snap up for his film debut, since he’d indicated interest in branching out that direction between plays.   
  
Chris has been a fan for fucking _years_. He’d know those eyes—pale blue, winter-blue, water-topaz blue shimmering under a grey-tinted magical mist—anywhere.   
  
Those eyes’re currently staring at him, sitting on dismal New York concrete outside a nondescript interchangeable Starbucks, and flinching a little. In pain.   
  
“Oh fuck—” Chris grabs for his wrist. Sebastian hadn’t been wearing gloves—why not? it’s half-freezing—and had tried to catch himself with one hand. The heel’s bleeding. Not bad, but scraped.    
  
Sebastian isn’t saying anything, possibly because of continued shock at the manhandling. Chris is tempted to collapse into a heap of panic and apologies and acute horror at his own clumsiness, but pulls himself together. Sebastian’s _bleeding_. Not a lot, not exactly life-threatening, but still.   
  
“Can I help? Clean this up? I’m so fucking sorry.”   
  
Sebastian looks at his hand. Then at Chris’s face.   
  
“I’m really sorry,” Chris tries. “I’m running kind of horribly late and I wasn’t looking and you sort of weren’t looking either and it’s my brother’s birthday and—you know what, never mind, that’s not fuckin’ important, I’m an idiot, tell me to stop talking, _please_.”   
  
“You dropped your…” They both look over at the bag. Chris feels the blood drain from his face. Pooling someplace around his feet. Oh _God_.   
  
He flails, knowing it’ll do zero good, “It’s not mine—I mean it is, but—it’s for my brother, um, we always get each other porn and ridiculous stupid sex-toy shit, it’s like a—thing, like a dumb birthday thing, we look for the weirdest shit ever and—he started it, okay, when I turned fifteen and he was younger and I didn’t even know he knew what porn was—oh God I’m so, so sorry.”   
  
The giant patriotic-striped vibrating dildo, tumbled out of its packaging, balances cheerfully on the ground and beams at them, brilliant red and white and blue against the chilly afternoon. It’s landed upright. Of course it has.   
  
“I don’t have siblings,” Sebastian says, which is so far from any reasonable-person response to the situation that Chris starts to wonder whether there’s head trauma involved. It’s entirely possible that he trampled Sebastian thoroughly enough to cause major cranial injury.   
  
Sebastian adds, tone interestedly contemplative, “I think perhaps I’ve been missing out on fascinating American family traditions. Are those firework designs, on the base?”   
  
“Um. Yeah?” The torn packaging promises Rockets of Pleasure! and It’ll Make You See Stars! They both process this for a while.    
  
Chris attempts once more, eventually, resigned to his fate of hideous embarrassment, “ _Are_ you okay?” He’s still holding Sebastian’s hand. He’s unsure whether Sebastian’s forgotten this fact or is simply too distracted by Rockets of Pleasure. “I mean, can I help clean this up and buy you new coffee and maybe another scarf? Or, y’know, just go hide in a sewer for the rest of my life and never bother you again, I can do that too.”   
  
“You were late, you said.” Sebastian tests fingers, curling them in and out. His voice wraps around consonants and vowels like smoke: swirling, lazy, seductive. “Am I making you even later? Don’t worry about me. And—a sewer? Seriously?”   
  
“Me and the Ninja Turtles. Can you stand up?”   
  
“Ninja Turtles…yes, I think so. Ow. Did you need your…that…”   
  
Chris, arm under Sebastian’s shoulder, sighs, “I should probably get him something that’s not rolled across the sidewalk, even if he’s never going to use it…sorry.”   
  
“For what, the cultural reference? I was twelve when we got to America, and not at _all_ too cool for teenage mutant chelonians. I liked Donatello. Ow, okay, stop for a second.” They pause just inside the Starbucks door. Chris eases him gingerly into an unoccupied chair, shoves napkins and a hastily begged cup of water at his scraped-up hand, then plops onto the floor and reaches for his ankle, the source of the most recent ouch. Sebastian makes a face at him. “It’s okay, really, just kind of rolled wrong when I tried to catch myself. I’m fine.”   
  
“Um,” Chris says, heart in his throat, sitting on the café floor at Sebastian’s feet, “maybe stay off it for a few minutes? Also, um, hi, I’m…Chris?”   
  
Sebastian grins. Even in the wake of paleness and pain, that smile lights up the room. Captivating Chris the way it captures audiences at Broadway shows, in theater seats, beneath spotlights. “I know. Chris Evans. I saw—”   
  
“Oh God you saw my movie.”   
  
“I did. Earnest, I thought. Emotional. I could…feel your heart in it. Every scene. I liked that.” Sebastian blushes for no readily apparent reason. “Can you please get off the floor and come up here?”   
  
“Oh,” Chris gulps, fumbling to his feet—and the skies open up outside, huge windowpane-rattling bone-shaking thunderclaps, torrents of rain yelling down from above, drops hurling themselves with abandon into the ground.   
  
Sebastian starts laughing, gazing out at the storm, wide-eyed with delight at the incontestable melodrama of the timing. Chris says, laughing too and breathless with possibilities, “I liked Leonardo.”   
  
“I’m somehow not at all surprised.” Sebastian’s eyes find his, beckoning, inviting, wry and sweet with the sharing of the moment. “I thought…you know I’ve been thinking, it’s been a headline, and if you knew who I was…not that I’d leave theater for good, but I’d like to try film…I don’t know if you would want to…”   
  
“Oh fuck it’s totally a romance,” Chris says, and then, lunging for solid ground, “I mean I like romance, romantic comedies, the world kinda needs that, y’know, and you’d be fantastic, I mean working with you would be, I didn’t mean you and me were a romance, I wouldn’t—not that I wouldn’t want to, I’d totally want to—romance—with you, I—I think I’m sweating a lot now.”   
  
Sebastian’s lips’re twitching like he’s trying not to laugh. Chris collapses into the chair on the other side of the table, drops his head into his arms, and mourns, “Fuck my life.”   
  
A hand settles atop his, calm and kind and a bit hesitant, as if Sebastian’s not entirely certain of welcome but is willing to step out and try. The rain clamors giddily behind the window. Chris looks up.   
  
“I might,” Sebastian says, wonderful smile back in place, not quite as wide but smaller, more hopeful, more shy, “want that as well. Both. A romantic comedy, yes. And also maybe…romance, with you.”   
  
“Oh wow,” Chris says, turning his hand, letting their fingers tangle together, learning the warmth of Sebastian’s skin. “Oh, wow. I—you—oh, shit, I still have a birthday party to—Mom’s gonna kill me, and I need to go find another gift—I don’t suppose you’d want to come along and put up with my family—what’m I saying, you’re probably busy, of course you are.” He means he doesn’t want to let go of Sebastian’s hand. Not yet. Not so soon.   
  
“I could. I’m not busy.” Sebastian’s eyes dance. The café’s cozy and dry and coffee-scented, a Starbucks-themed shelter from the tempest. “If your family wouldn’t mind me crashing your party.”   
  
“Seriously? They’ll completely adore you, even more if you like Italian food and chocolate cake, and that’s a yes, right? Please?”   
  
“I like those things,” Sebastian agrees, fingers tapping the back of Chris’s hand: I like you, too. Chris’s stomach flips. Swooping excited thrills. “And, as far as a gift…I may happen to know a very friendly shop, about three blocks east, that sells glow-in-the-dark oversized vibrators.”


End file.
